News & Events

Students from The University of Brunei Darussalam (UBD) and The Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK) attended a joint lecture on September 26, 2024. Together, they explored the idea of storybooks in kindergarten and how language education is approached in the early years in Brunei and Hong Kong. 

  

In Brunei Darussalam, a nation of about half a million, most of the storybooks for children are not locally written but imported from other countries. Dr. Nordiana Zakir and Hjh Zuriyatini Zainal proposed getting their early childhood education students to create their own children's storybooks to be published locally. This way, young children in Brunei can better identify with the content and design of these locally published books and feel proud of their local culture.

 

In collaboration with Dr. Jenny Chan from The Department of Early Childhood Education, EdUHK, the Brunei-Hong Kong team designed a lesson to allow Brunei students to share the process of creating their storybooks with students from EdUHK. EdUHK students read the books, shared their thoughts, and provided feedback to the four Bruneian students. By learning about each other's favorite childhood storybooks, reading the books of the Bruneian students, and learning how Chinese books are written, our students learn more about each other's lives and cultures and how we are different yet similar in many ways. 

 

Hjh Zainal and Dr. Chan also took turns giving a short lecture about language education in Brunei and Hong Kong to help students learn about how language is taught in different regions and settings. Students shared that this unique opportunity allowed them to learn more about another region and opened their eyes to the differences in Southeast and East Asian cultures. They appreciated the opportunity to exchange opinions with students from other regions.

 

A Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) activity is a collaboration between a lecturer from the ECE Department and another lecturer from an overseas university, who teaches an ECE-related course. The two lecturers design one or several online tasks that allow their respective students to interact with one another and learn about ECE in another country or jurisdiction simultaneously.  The Department has collaborated with peers in Australia, Germany, China, Mexico, Norway, Spain etc. For more information about COIL, please visit: https://www.eduhk.hk/ece/en/engagement.php?s=recent_focus.